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UTILITY WEEK | 12TH - 18TH JUNE 2015 | 25 Operations & Assets Infrastructure alliance: TW, Agility & KCD Graham Lunt, the lead for Thames Water's infrastruc- ture alliance, said the role for TW, Agility & KCD, was pretty much like a day job centring on leak detec- tion, repair, maintenance, new connections and new mains. However, the focus moving forward was on customer service. Said Lunt: "The alliance partners came together at the end of a procurement process in December 2014. We became the preferred bidder in the first week in December, signed contracts on the 30 January, and started live operations on 30 March. We've done that across 24 sites without any dip in customer service performance." Thames Water sets three key stipulations for the alliance. The first is the budget, which is driven by the financial determination from Ofwat. That budget is fixed, the outcomes are fixed, and the performance commitments are also fixed. Furthermore, the incen- tives for all of the alliance partners are identical. "The second mandate is the visions and values of Thames Water, and we've done a lot of work to ensure these reflect what the employees want," explained Lunt. "The third mandate is our brand – we will now be branded solely as Thames Water to our 8.5 million clean water customers." There are also three main performance and service commitments. "First, we must improve our CSAT performance and raise our position in the pack as measured by Ofwat, and we must ensure that performance is perceived by our customers and the regulator to improve," said Lunt. "The second is that we have a very stringent leakage target, which we need to out- perform, and the third is being better at overcoming supply interruptions." The alliance is now looking to the supply chain for help in delivering its performance commitments. "We're not only seeking support with innovations that will help get assets into the right condition and operate them in the right manner, but solutions that will enable us to deliver a good service to our custom- ers," he said. "It's not just about pipes, or water qual- ity, it's about service reliability." Project alliance: AMK Oisin Gibson from the Deephams project alliance, which centres on the upgrade of a major sewage treatment works in Enfield, expressed a keen desire to find innovations to aid this major project, which was initiated in November 2013. "We've been busy upgrading two- thirds of the existing site and introducing a bypass for fixed film activated sludge," Gibson explained. "We're going to push all of the flow through those two streams on a temporary basis over the next two years, which will enable us to build a new section of the plant on the existing north- ern area of the site." Once that is commissioned, AMK will work on the remaining section of the site. "Stream A is due to start construction very soon as part of a total programme that will continue until the end of 2018," said Gibson. "Even though we've already been in touch with a lot of the supply chain and started our procurement pro- cess, we're looking for more innovation – solutions that will make it safer to build, cheaper to run, and make it a better qual- ity plant. Two key areas are operational cost (energy) and carbon savings." Innovation solutions for AMK Among the companies presenting to AMK were ABS, Advanced Water & Waste (The A+ Group), Andritz, Aqualogy Environ- ment, Carlow Precast Tanks, Naylor Envi- ronmental, Partech Electronics, Euroby, Nivus, Secure Meters, Siltbuster Process Solutions, Torishima Energy Systems and Veolia Water Technologies. The solutions focused on everything from operational cost, energy and carbon footprint reductions, through to non- infrastructure innovation and the adoption of technology from other industries. Innovation solutions for TW, Agility & KCD Network optimisation proved to be one of the central themes of the workshop for Thames Water's infrastruc- ture alliance. Innovations centring on leakage detec- tion, pressure and surge management were core topics. Also featuring heavily were solutions for logging, pumping, zonal and district metering, data collection and analysis, and CCTV surveying. Other presentation subjects included zero excava- tion and zero interruption to customer supplies, as well as ideas to benefit street works, traffic management, sustainable urban drainage systems and permanent reinstatement. Companies pitching their innovations included Acoustic Sensing Technology, Grundfos, Noreva, Stuart Turner Ltd, Syrinix, Aqualogy Environment, Metas- phere, Impact Solutions and William Hackett Chains. Key points 31 technology companies pitch their innovations, Dragon's Den style Thames Water Alliances assess each 10-minute pitch with green, amber or red responses 19th event of its type staged by British Water since the concept's inception in 2011 THE RESULTS l Of the 31 companies that took part in the latest Innovation Exchange, ten (32 per cent) received a green response, meaning their solutions were of definite and immediate interest. These will be invited for further discus- sion and possible trial. l Eleven companies (36 per cent) received an am- ber response, meaning either more information was required or perhaps the right person or team was not in the workshop, so they will be invited back to give the presenta- tion to the right people. l A red response was given to ten companies (32 per cent). In these cases, either the innova- tion or technology was already familiar, already deployed through an- other organisation, or not practical for the alliance to use.